do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)

[BeerMoney]

I think some players are luckier than others perhaps over the course of the year. Some people are going to be in the top 5% luckiest, and some will be in the bottom 5% unluckiest. If you were at a roulette wheel, and lost 15 out of 16 betting on red, that would be cruddy luck. It would take a while for that all to balance out.

Look at what can happen in poker..

You can be patient and wait for good hands.. only for them to get cracked..

You can build up some pots with draws that never come in..

Your draws can come in and you still lose.

You can go cold flopping sets..

When you do flop a set no one is in the pot

When you flop a set some chump cathes runner's for a straight..

You run into a bigger set.

You flop a flush and get run down by an ace of that flush.

You raise AK and totally miss the flop

AA gets cracked, and cracked again.

You get a huge hand, only to run into a bigger hand..

You get a huge hand and no one calls..


just chill out man, you can run bad for a long time, and the long run truly is long. However, things will even out. And you will run hot, and things will go "as their supposed to."

My friend won $1100 playing 3/6 in his first week on Party. (He has a good amount of experience playing, he's read books, he's a solid player, IMO.) It looked like he was going to own party poker in another week. And then, the cards stopped coming! He's back down to $350. He's no longer king of the world. He's the same player he was a week ago, if not better. He's just running cold.

[jan33]

i think that if u start to think ur unlucky
you better quit for that day and play a few days later after checking ur play....and try to figure out why ur "unlucky"

[boogiemang]

this is poker.

the 2 plus 2 war forum server must be down.

long term, long term

[Ace_Ren]

The prerequisite to someone sucking out is that they must first be in a losing situation.

If you are a good player, your opponents are going to be sucking out on you a lot more than you will suck out on them. That's the nature of luck, it favors the bad player because the bad player relies upon it more. However, even over a pretty short run, the money gained from constantly being in 70/30 situations will show itself.

As far as coinflip situations, it's very possible that you tend to put yourself on the bad end of the coinflip. This is most often achieved by laying down the small and mid pocket pairs while calling with the two big cards.

It makes sense: You are a good player, so you know that your mid pocket pair is either about 50/50 or is a huge dog. So you lay it down to a big raise. On the flip side, you know that your AK is about 50/50 with anything other than AA or KK and has a big advantage over non-pairs, so you call. However, you are constantly at a 55/45 situation against you, so you'll end up losing the 'coinflips' greater than 50% of the time.

Pokerstove:
Hand 1: 44.7032 % [ 00.45 00.00 ] { AKs, AKo }
Hand 2: 55.2968 % [ 00.55 00.00 ] { QQ-77 }

The coinflips aren't exactly coinflips.

[ThisHo]

[ QUOTE ]
what i meant was that i haven't won 50% of the coinflip situations over a lot of hands.. i have my AA cracked much more often than i crack other players.

[/ QUOTE ]

1a - How do you know that you are losing more than 50% of the coin flips?
1b - you do realize that the term "race" or "coin flip" isn't exactly accurate. These situations are not exactly 50/50. In many cases the pocket pair is a slight favorite (55:45). Over your life if you enter every "coin flip" as the favorite, you'd win more than 50%. Are you getting $$$ in with AK a lot? If you were to play AKs vs QQ every hand for the rest of your life you'd better have QQ or you're going to go broke.

2 - How are you playing your ACES? If you are playing them too cute or slow then yes, they are going to get cracked more often. If you are playing them fast and strong and getting them into heads up situations then you're fine.
2a - Its not how often they get cracked, its how much $$$ you are winning (or god-forbid losing) with them long term. If you are playing limit and get AA and raise with them but still get 6 callers then the chances that the AA will get cracked increase... but the $$$ that you win when they DON'T get cracked increases as well, while your investment into the pot stays the same. Its not about the # of pots its about the Benjamins!
2b - YES, at low limits its very very likely that the number of times you're aces get cracked is more than the number of times you crack other peoples aces - This is because at low limits you usually have 3 or 4 or ... 8 villains gunning for your aces, even in a raised pot AND if you are talking about the number of times you crack aces, you are only 1 person against those aces. I was going to suggest that you look at how often other peoples aces are being cracked BUT you can't really do that because often when they are cracked they get mucked and you don't know about it... so you still have a perception problem.
2c - when you raise with AA and everyone folds do you get upset that no one called? Just wondering...

In Short:
QUIT YOUR BIYATCHIN' or Call Phil Helmuth and commisserate!

That's what ThisHo has to say about this!

[phish]

[ QUOTE ]
is it in anyway possible that some people actually have better luck?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes and no. If you're asking whether it's possible that you have been extra unlucky in the past, then the answer is yes. There is absolutely no guarantee that cards break even over even a long period of time. (Do a cold simulation on two players w/ identical profiles and you'll see that one player may well be up substantially over a long period of time, tho the profit as a % of $$ wagered will be negligible in the long run). Now does this means that all the guys who are pros and are making money merely the ones who've been lucky. NO. Because luck, as a % of money wagered, becomes less and less over time and an expert player, even if he has been unlucky, would still have had enough of an edge to be profitable. Of course he would not have been as profitable as a similarly skilled player who has run better. My rough rule of thumb is if you're not showing profit after 50,000 hands, you're almost certainly not beating the game.

Now if you're asking whether some people are just luckier than others and this luck will continue into the future. Then the answer is a resounding NO. Regardless of what's happened in the past, in the future no one will be luckier than anyone else.
I suspect that most people who complain about luck have some major flaws in their game. And complaining about luck merely distracts you from focusing on what about your game you can improve. Your game is not perfect. think about improving it rather than complaining about luck.

[Lexander]

Some people are luckier than others. It is just inherent in randomness and nothing anybody can do anything about.

It is also fundamentally meaningless, and should have no bearing on your play. Over a very, very, very longterm, there shouldn't be any noticeable difference, but in practice some people are going to have lucky years and other people are not. Just the way it is.

[gasgod]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know what else to say. I have a strong feeling you are playing at stakes which are too high for you as well. Start playing absolute micro limits where you can focus on your play regardless of your results.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is really good advice. I will take it one step further. Try play money tournaments (both S&G and multi-table) for learning. After the first couple orbits, the crazies that plague the play money world are busted out, and most of those left are people genuinely trying to learn.


GG

[grimel]

[ QUOTE ]
let me dispute a few points that were made.
1. i don't play above my limit. i play small time SnG's.

never the less, if you win less than 50% of the coinflip hands doesn't that make you less lucky than the next guy? is it possible to play an entire 'career' of poker and come out below that 50% mark? i think it might be....

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe you hit the problem. How often are your 50/50 situations heads up vs multiway? In small time SNG's the call with anything to the end ratio is way out of kilter.

Last night I was steaming well beyond reason after 3 straight cheap SNG's busting me out with AA, KK, and flopping a set of Q's. I was called by 56 off pre-flop and lost to a river straight. Then called by 92 and lost to a flopped 2 pair. Finally, my set of Q's was busted when the callers (2) hit a flush and a straight, on the river 7 and 8 high respectfully.

Today, I sat down to clear a bonus at a $0.50/$1.00 NL table with $50. I was with a maniac and a uber tight rock. I left that table in less than 30 min with $140 (over half the table $$) by creaming the maniac and pushing the rock off everything. I cleared $2 of the bonus. I'll get the rest later today.

The differance? I was heads up with the nutcase and a bit better than 50/50 instead of facing 3 people on draws.